– Oooh, hurry up! Cries one of the teachers to the children, who had already been playing for a while in the schoolyard before the school day starts.
– Oooh, we are here! Cries the children and comes running and line up.

The locally produced striped happy plastic bucket is filled halfway with water. The children stand close together, almost without pushing. Quickly they rinse the dust of their hands in the bucket. Hands dry quickly in the Burkina heat. This is the first time today the children wash their hands at the preschool in Nakamtenga and it will be at least four more times.

– We always have dust on our hands. Everybody has. You can see the dirt in water, explains Constantin splashing a little extra water droplets around.

Before we eat, we wash our hands again. The morning’s wash water is thrown on the banana plant. Now it’s clean water in the buckets again. We are standing in a row behind one of the buckets and wet our hands. We make a small step to the side, and enter the next line where a child keeps the soap cup. In turn, all the children lather up their hands on all sides and between fingers. We rub, scrub and foam our hands. Then we take a small step to the side again where the next child with a striped plastic teapot pour a nice little ray of pure water over our hands to rinse. It is quickly done for now we are hungry and 90 children are to wash themselves at the three washing stations before we are allowed to eat.